Planeta Océano: protecting the Giant Manta
Support this projectKerstin Forsberg is determined in engaging coastal fishermen communities of Peru in protecting the giant manta ! To do so, she created the marine educator’s teacher network as well as participatory research or community-based manta ray ecotourism. Planeta Océano engages coastal communities in marine conservation through research, marine education and sustainable development initiatives. These initiatives include:
1. Participatory research and citizen science: Local volunteers (fishermen, children, youth, among others) actively investigate local ecosystems, fisheries, and marine species, thus supporting local management efforts. Projects have included assessing shark and ray fisheries, pioneering manta ray conservation in Peru, assessing Traditional Ecological Knowledge on critically endangered sawfish, and supporting Marine Protected Areas.
2. Marine education: Incorporating and institutionalizing marine education and Ocean Literacy. Projects have included setting up Peru’s “Marine Educators Teacher Network” with over 50 schools, leading incubators for youth-lead environmental initiatives, game-based education and their Connecting Schools program, which aims to bring together students across borders through online technology and community engagement.
3. Sustainable development: Fostering environmental entrepreneurship and market-based approaches that contribute to marine conservation and socio-economic development. For example, pioneering community-based manta ray ecotourism in Peru as an alternate livelihood for low-income fishermen and local artisans.
Ultimately, these multidisciplinary and participatory efforts serve as a platform to connect multiple sectors in marine conservation, thus bringing together government, academia, youth, children, local fishermen, and many others.
Initial Problem
The ocean is our planet’s main life support system, it regulates our climate, provides over half of the oxygen we breathe, sustains livelihoods and food security and makes our planet habitable. We all depend on the ocean, even if we have never seen it. However, our ocean is continuously exposed to threats such as over-exploitation, pollution and climate change, threatening livelihoods and subsistence of coastal communities. Peru hosts the most productive marine system on the planet, yet there was a clear need to engage coastal communities in marine conservation, thus supporting sustainable development.
The positive impacts that the project has made
To date, Planeta Océano has reached over 500,000 people and engaged over 10 local communities. They’ve directly engaged over 400 citizen scientists to create new scientific information and positively influence resource management, educated over 35,000 people (children, youth, adults) in marine education and incubated over 20 community and youth-lead environmental projects, including fisheries monitoring, mangrove reforestation, among others. Their efforts have engaged communities in northern Peru to pioneer manta research and conservation. In collaboration with the Peruvian government, local communities and partners, Planeta Oceano was able to achieve legal protection for giant manta rays and critically endangered sawfish in Peru. They formed Northern Peru’s Marine Educators Network and set up manta tourism as a novel source of income in the country. Their research has generated new scientific evidence for the country (e.g. uncovering evidence of green turtle nesting together with local girls), information that contributed to management.
Impacted areas and populations
Planeta Oceano’s projects are mainly focused in coastal Peru, specifically northern Peru. Beneficiaries and partners include small-scale fishermen, women, youth and children, as well as researchers and government officials. Their efforts are also scaling-up internationally, through collaborative research across the Eastern Pacific region, as well as in the development of our Connecting Schools program, which aims to engage schools across borders in marine education and conservation.
The obstacles and challenges
Challenges have included economic sustainability leading to turn-over and continuous internal capacity building. More recently, restrictions in travel and fieldwork because of the pandemic have created obstacles for project operations. In every case, Planeta Oceano strives to turn challenges into opportunities, developing further collaborations and creative ideas. For example, they are designing virtual tourism expeditions as an alternative to in-person manta ray tourism. Economic challenges guide us to establish a wider portfolio of partnerships and services. And, our internal capacity-building efforts have proven to serve as a successful incubator for young conservation professionals.
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The Widou Thiengoly multi-purpose gardens
Coumba Dady KA is fighting for positive change in Senegal through the creation of polyvalent gardens with fellow women. The garden’s final goal is to ensure food diet diversification and increased financial autonomy thanks to the engagement of these women. It’s inspiring!
The polyvalent gardens are parallel projects to the great green wall project in order to combat desertification. These gardens were set up and are managed in consultation with the women living in the villages across the Great Green Wall. These determined women have formed various Economic Interest Groups. The aim of these gardens is to allow the cultivation of fruits and vegetables throughout the year, to provide food security to different villages across the Great Green Wall.
These gardens should provide enough food for self-consumption as well as enabling villagers to diversify theIR diet. What’s more, they have the possibility to sell their surplus crops at weekly markets. This initiative thus enables the women to achieve a new social and financial autonomy, as well as to develop their expertise in agriculture.
Sustainable Cupuaçu in the Amazon
The Sustainable Cupuaçu in the Amazon project, the result of a partnership established between the Klorane Botanical Foundation (KBF), L’Institut de Recherche Pierre Fabre (IRPF) and Beraca Institute for the Valorization of Sociobiodiversity (IB), was born with the intention of providing farmers and quilombola extractivists a new economic opportunity through the production of cupuaçu (Theobroma grandiflorum), a native species to the Amazon, through the Agroforestry System (SAF).
The project was conceived from KBF’s three missions: to protect; to explore; to educate. These missions were the guiding elements for the construction of the project’s objective and action areas, which have the following propositions:
PROTECT – Main element of the project that aims to protect the Amazon biome from the restoration of degraded areas through the implementation of agroforestry systems (SAF) in Bela Aurora Community. The project foresaw the planting of 3,000 feet of cupuaçu (in addition to other Integrated species) in the expectation of a production of around 6 tons of seeds in 3-4 years. The strategy adopted to achieve this objective is to transfer technology between family farmers in the community of Bela Aurora and the community of Santa Luzia, in Tomé Açu, which has a history of production in SAFs.
EXPLORE – The pillar aims to systematize and disseminate knowledge from the project’s learning and results, through scientific publications, congresses, etc.
EDUCATE – Consists on conducting workshops with children and young people from the Bela Aurora community, seeking to reinforce the element of environmental education in SAF cultures. This formal moment aims to help develop a more theoretical and critical perception of reality, focusing on the role of human beings in nature, the dynamics of trees in the forest and the importance of preserving biodiversity to maintain the balance of the biome. Within the initiatives aimed at implementing the SAFs, Six training workshops were planned, which involve activities to raise awareness of the importance of restoring degraded areas, preserving the environment and agro-ecological production with family farmers in Bela Aurora.
Pristine Seas Protection Project
Ocean life has a critical role in supporting all life on Earth. That is why Enric Sala founded National Geographic Pristine Seas, and together with partners and local communities have inspired the protection of 22 places in the ocean covering a total area of more than 5.8 million square kilometers — nearly half the area of the United States. Pristine Seas seeks to explore, document and inspire the protection of the last wild places in the ocean.
The project team works with partners, local communities and governments to help create marine reserves, using their unique combination of exploration, research and storytelling. These reserves have both local and global benefits. Local benefits include enhancing the sustainability of local fishing, perpetuating local cultures and lifestyles, developing ecotourism opportunities, enhancing coastal protection from storm surge, increasing food security, and improving livelihoods. Global benefits include mitigation of climate change via ocean carbon storage, as well as protection of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services.
Pristine Seas is working to help achieve a global goal of protecting 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, thereby bolstering marine biodiversity and improving food provision, while safeguarding the ability of the ocean to help mitigate climate change through carbon storage.
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